About The Writers

Sunday, September 13, 2015

Bye Bye Love…I think I’m-a-gonna cry-y

I think I’m-a-gonna cry-y

By Jennifer Goble

On a recent three week motorcycle trip to Niagara Falls, we passed a sign in Ohio that read, “Steubenville - Next Exit.” Through the bluetooth in our helmets, I said, “I’m glad we don’t live here, it sounds like Stupidville.”

Fast forward, we could not find the hotel. We stopped to look at a map, oriented our location, and took off.

After checking into our now found hotel, my husband walked to the luggage where he had removed the map, and said, “Oh no! Your computer is gone!” I thought he was kidding, but he said, “No, it’s gone. I must have forgotten to zip the bag!”

My hands flew over my mouth, and I leaned against the bike because my legs felt like melted butter.

Book drafts, edits, hundreds of articles, pictures, graphics, letters, submissions, contacts, and queries all flashed through my head. To top it off, I envisioned my credit card numbers and a dozen passwords taped to the case. Within seconds, thousands of images spun in my brain.

Just as fast, my thoughts shifted. I had backed up my files to an external drive before we left home, I reminded myself credit cards can be cancelled and passwords changed, I realized it could have been us on the pavement instead of the computer, and I knew where we were when it fell because I heard a weird noise,

It helped tremendously that my husband took responsibility, felt terrible, and apologized profusely. He truly felt like the Mayor of Stupidville.

We backtracked our route, and sure enough, at the light where I heard the sound, the road was glistening with black pieces of plastic and two shattered computer screens, one clear and one black. But, there was nothing resembling a hard drive or black case taped with paper notes.

Dodging traffic, we searched the street but found nothing resembling a laptop shell. We were about to give up when we noticed a dumpster, and after creeping and scrounging , there it was -- credit card numbers and all.

In one hour, I went from ready to vomit to gratitude extraordinaire. This story could have ended much more tragically and I might not be sitting at a new computer with years of data restored writing my first blog for Northern Colorado Writers.

3 comments:

Welcome to the NCW blog, Jennifer! Your post brought back the nightmare of computer troubles I experienced in June and July when I was pretty close to fixing all the problems with a hammer. Yes, I did lose a few files and photos, but I had backed up the really important stuff so I'll survive. And my husband just bought us our very own Cloud to use for easy backups at home. (It feels good to have a cloud of my own!)

First of all, I wouldn't be crazy enough to ride a motorcycle with a laptop. However, if I were to lose my computer while traveling, I would do the same thing you did, be thankful necessary files are copied elsewhere and also that my credit card information and passwords aren't anywhere on the computer. I'm glad everything worked out for the best. It still probably wouldn't be a bad idea to get new credit cards and change passwords just in case.

Oh, the joys of traveling by motorcycle. Glad you were able to recover your data and other very important information. I didn't lose my laptop but I came close to getting it drowned this past summer. To keep it "secure" while I attended a shooting class, I locked it in one of the panniers. During the class, Loveland CO experienced a deluge of magnificent proportions. Thinking the panniers were waterproof, I didn't worry. Late that afternoon, when I got to my hotel and opened the pannier to retrieve my laptop, I got a rude surprise, water in the bottom. A corner of the laptop case was waterlogged but, thankfully, the computer hadn't gotten wet. Now, when I haul it around on one of the bikes, I put it in one of those Glad ForceFlex trash bags.